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The Civil War Pension Index on Ancestry.com is the last place I would have expected to find myself this evening, but I have been hearing a lot about the American Civil War recently and thought I ought to at least show an interest.

There are two families in my family tree (the ALLCORNs and the EADEs) who emigrated to America, they are connected to me by way of the TROWERs of Henfield, Sussex. I have never really bothered to follow them over to the United States apart from a bit of census searching.

In the Civil War Pension Index I found an entry for Charles T ALLCORN and I have a Charles Trower ALLCORN in my family tree. The quality of the image is pretty atrocious and I can’t really make out much of the record but it looks like the pension claim was filed on the 27th August 1891 in Connecticut. Connecticut is the state where the ALLCORNs appear to have settled.

Charles Trower ALLCORN was born in Brighton, Sussex, England in 1854 and his family seem to have arrived in the US in 1866, which based on my limited research into the Civil War seems to rule him out of serving during the Civil War.

Interestingly the 1880 census possibly shows him as a soldier, it might not be him as there is not enough detail to be certain, but it seems quite a good match. This makes me wonder if the Civil War Pension Index is not just limited to Civil War soldiers? The truth is that I don’t really have a clue, could this native of Sussex really be in the Civil War Pension Index? Do I have time to look into this further?